My Super-powered Diary Chapter 42 Ghosts of the Past By Amethyst When Maddock Ainsley gets involved in a rescue operation with his unit things go horribly wrong and his life is forever changed. Can the newly minted Merida cope with being a girl and a teenage super hero?

I was trapped in a tiny and dark cell that I remembered all too well, pounding my tiny fists on the steel door desperately. My hands were raw and bloody and my shouts and screams for release had left my voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. Still I kept pounding away and croaking out my pleas for release. It was dark and cold and claustrophobia gripped my heart like a vice. I had to get out, I couldn’t take the captivity anymore and I knew that I would do anything to be free. I had tried using my powers to escape, but the second that I had summoned my force field some kind of containment shield had activated.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” Phantom said. She grinned and walked toward me, reaching for me. “Dead or not, you’re going to fear me until your dying day, because at heart you’re a weak little girl. I’ll always be with you!”

I awoke screaming again. Phantom. The details of the dream still haunted my mind, refusing to release their grip on me as I sat there in my sleeping bag, shaking and crying as my heart beat wildly in my chest. As Fawn attempted to calm me down so we could both do the same for Peaches, who hadn’t just been woken by the explosion but had been picking up on my own fear as well, I took a cautious look around. My pulse was still racing, my breathing quick and shallow, and I just couldn’t seem to stop the tears. It was bad enough Fawn seeing me like this nearly every morning, but my sisters and all of the members of 4-Ward, with the exception of Lindsey, were outside my tent watching in concern. My cheeks flushed as I realized that the explosion of my unstable energy hitting the containment field had woken them all up and that most of my friends had just seen me shaking and sobbing from some stupid dream. I wanted to crawl back in my sleeping bag, as deep as I could go, and hide.

“Whose stupid idea was this campout anyway? Oh right, it was mine. Well played Merida, way to show your girlfriend and your friends how pathetic you are. The broken boy-girl with the PTSD, nightmares, and the ability to destroy the whole fucking city if not properly locked up at night, yeah I bet they all just loooove you now. What do you do for an encore?” I mentally chided myself. It seemed that my encore was self-pity as I held Peaches and gave in to my urge to hide in my sleeping bag and tried to get control of my powers again.

At least Fawn couldn’t be hurt and she was trying her best shake me out of the funk I had put myself in with words of encouragement, but I had come to a realization that only made my mood sink lower as I hugged my baby dragon tightly. Until now I had been nervous about having Peaches sleep in my bed with me and had been putting her in her improvised basket outside the bed’s barrier when I slept, nervous about testing whether she really was as resistant to heat and explosions as Mei had been hoping. I had unthinkingly brought her into the tent with me and Fawn to sleep though and even though it seemed that she was indeed resistant to the destructive aspects of my powers it had been stupid and irresponsible of me. She could have been killed.

I was clutching the tiny pink dragon to my chest and blubbering out apologies for being a horrible dragon-mama when I felt a pair of arms wrap around me. It was Fawn of course, she was the only one who could actually touch me when I had my force field on since our fields just merged together when they touched. She had switched to her human-sized form and now she was holding me in her arms, gently stroking my hair and telling me that it would all be alright.

It was some time before I managed to shake my dour mood and get enough control over my emotional state to power down my force field. “Thanks Fawn,” I sniffled as she pulled back from the hug. “Yuir a good friend, helpin’ me through tha’ like ya dae e’ery mornin’.”

She gave me that bright and infectious smile of hers. “That’s what best friends are for Merida. I’m glad that I got my new ability, I’ve been wanting to hug you like that when you’ve needed it since we met and I can’t really hold you when you need it in my Fairy form.”

“Aye, thanks fer tha’. I feel so stoopid. Hana an’ all the others saw me bein’ a baby after losin’ control o’ ma powers agin, an’ I pu’ Peaches in danger by no’ testin’ her resistance tae ma powers afore bringin’ her tae bed wit’ us,” I admitted guiltily.

“Peaches is fine, she’s just upset that you’re upset, and nobody is judging you Merida. You’ve been through some horrible things and it makes sense that you’re having nightmares about it. And with your condition you can’t help losing control of your powers when you get upset. Now c’mon, you have to be hungry, so let’s go join the others so we can all check on Lindsey and get something to eat.”

“I guess I am a wee bit ‘ungry,” I conceded as I picked Peaches up in my arms again and left to join the others with Fawn at my side. They looked concerned, but for me not themselves. Hana approached and Fawn went to go say her good mornings to everyone else to give us a bit of privacy.

“You okay sweetie?” my girlfriend asked, not really giving me a chance to answer before wrapping me up in her arms and giving me a good morning kiss that quickened my pulse in that good way and made me feel warm and gooey in all the right places. It was right there in her eyes for me to see, she wasn’t scared of morning explosions and she was ready to hold and comfort me every morning if she needed to. This was a part of me and she accepted that and wanted to share in it as she did every other part. “How would you feel about a nice big breakfast at the restaurant once we’re all cleaned up and Linds is awake, I think we have some time though so if there’s anything you need to talk about we can wait to shower until the others are done.”

“Aye, I’m better now, jus’ another nightmare. I… I’ve been havin’ them since we escaped. I’m kinda s’posed tae be writin’ it down fer Toxin in ma dream journal,” I said after kissing her right back and just letting her hold me for a moment before stepping back uncertainly.

“Getting it out might help, so if you want you can tell me all about it while you write it down,” she offered again.

“I’m no’ shoor, I’m pretty messed up Hana, dae ya really wan’ tae see tha side o’ me?” I asked shaking a bit at the thought of revealing those deepest fears and uncertainties.

“You’re not messed up, you’re the bravest and most wonderful person that I know. You’re so powerful and strong, but tender and vulnerable at the same time and that is so sexy to me. I’m falling in love with you Merida, all of you. Do you really think that I don’t have fears and flaws too? Sharing them, sharing that burden, it’s what good couples do.” She clasped my shaking hands in her own, staring into my eyes and I just knew that she meant every word of it. Then she pulled me back into her arms and held me close.

I felt so safe, so loved and wanted. Yes I felt vulnerable too, afraid of scaring her off, but I’ve always felt that fear is a choice. You can either give in, let it have its way with you and let it win, or you can choose to tell it to fuck off, barrel through it, and get on with your life. I swallowed that lump of fear and uncertainty that had taken up residence in my throat and wiped my tears aide as I nodded my head against her shoulder. “Aye, let’s go an’ ge’ ma journal an’ I’ll tell ya aboot it.” I wanted to share myself with her as much as I wanted her to share herself with me and I was going to have to share these things with her eventually if our relationship was going to work. I needed to trust her. I did trust her. She had known that I was damaged goods going into this relationship so maybe once in a while it would be okay to let her be the strong one.

Jonas Lake ate his oatmeal silently, grimacing at the pain that even that mostly watery food caused in his jaw. The pain was of course due to him being beaten up yesterday, again. It wasn’t the first time and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Puberty was only just beginning to make itself known and at fourteen he was a fairly small boy with freckles and hair bleached near-white from spending too much time in the California sunshine. He sometimes wished that he could tan like some of the other boys so he could fit in better, but he never did. Nope, his tender flesh turned as red as a lobster if he didn’t wear proper sunblock and either way the sun always made the freckles worse. So he had been bullied a lot growing up in St. Sebastian’s Home for Orphaned Boys.

It had been getting worse though, ever since he had returned to the orphanage weeks ago. His time away hadn’t been for a prospective adoption or anything like that. No, Jonas had been kidnapped and held captive by some crazy mutants who had claimed that he was one of them and that they would give him powers to help their cause. They hadn’t given him powers though they just tortured him and gave him all sorts of drugs that made his head feel funny.

The government people who had rescued him and the other boys had him seeing a counsellor about his experience but he had terrible nightmares and one morning some of the other boys had witnessed him waking up screaming and then crying in the aftermath of reliving those experiences in his dreams. The bullying went from mere taunting about his hair and freckles to calling him a girl and shoving, tripping or hitting whenever the eyes of the adults weren’t on them. The adults didn’t seem to care much either as long as it didn’t get to the point where he was hospitalized.

He finished his meal as quickly as possible and ran off for his secret place before some of the other boys could think to corner him and finish what they had started yesterday, before one of the caregivers had interrupted them and taken Jonas to the infirmary to get treated for his ‘fall’. Once he was in the cool darkness of the hollow that he had dug beneath the equipment shed and the loose board was put back in place, he curled up in a ball and let out a sigh. That had been close, he had barely avoided them. Even now he could hear the voices of some of the older boys who were searching for him, whistling and calling out, “Here spot! C’mon girl! Be a good little bitch and come on out!”

He was terrified of them, nearly as terrified as he was of his nightmares. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? “You’re always going to be a victim as long as you’re afraid. You’ll never be free of them until you make them fear you,” the voice said.

It was a girl’s or maybe a woman’s voice, but it wasn’t just a voice there was kind of a hazy white blur that Jonas could always sort of see from the corner of his eye. He had first seen and heard her when the government people had been talking to him and the other boys in the dorm room that they had spent their captivity in. He hadn’t said anything to them because he had thought it might have been due to the drugs they had been giving him and the other boys. He had almost given himself away when he laughed a little at a mean comment that she had made about the government man talking to them.

He had managed to convince the man that the laugh was because of the drugs, but in that moment the voice had asked, “You can hear me?” His barely visible nod had been enough to let her know that he could and she had stuck with him since, helping him however she could, but there wasn’t very much that a disembodied voice could really do for him. That was why he was hiding in a hole in the ground, curled up in a ball.

“I just want to be left alone!” Jonas wailed, wiping at the tears falling down his cheeks.

“I could help you with that,” the voice offered sweetly. “I could make it so they can never hurt you again.”

“You can?! B…but you don’t have a b…body,” he sniffled.

“I have an idea about that, Jonas” the voice said. “I can make sure that those boys never hurt anyone again, but I’ll need something from you in return.”

“R…really?! P…please! You can have anything you want!”

“We have a deal.” Jonas was aware of that blurry presence rushing toward him and then only of pain as his body was rearranged. Bones and flesh were pulled, pushed, and contracted until finally it was over and the whimpering ball on the floor realized that she could move again without pain. Yes, she, for Jonas could feel the absence of what was once between his legs and the presence of two very distinct weights on his, now her, chest.

“Wh…what have you done?! she squealed. The words didn’t leave her mouth.

Then Jonas’s body spoke and she could feel the smile on her lips. “I needed to makes some changes if I was going to give this body the powers that I had in life, this is much more comfortable too, don’t you think? A little young, but I don’t mind that so much. Now let’s go take care of my part of the contract.”

She was suddenly back out in the play yard right in front of the boys who had been looking for Jonas. Jonas watched, horrified, as her body popped from place to place all over the play yard taking pieces of the boys with her and leaving it a bloody mess of dismembered body parts. As much as Jonas wanted to cry and scream out she couldn’t, and so the echoing screams of the boys rang in her ears. Finally it was over and Jonas’s mouth spoke again. “I have fulfilled my part of the deal Contractor. Now I will take my payment.”

“B… but…” Jonas tried to speak, but could feel herself being pushed from her body and now she could see for herself just how much it had changed. She was still fourteen, but very obviously a girl now. She might have been pretty, even with the chalk white skin and hair, if it hadn’t been for those malevolent glowing red eyes and that predatory smile.

“Good bye Jonas, thank you for making this so easy. Enjoy your afterlife, I’m off to get a little revenge.” Phantom smiled as she took in the grisly scene around her and listened to the music of approaching sirens, her thoughts on a certain redhead and just what she would do to her once she found her. “Oh yes, it’s good to be back.”